Billing for AI-assisted work: what can go on the account

The rule: fair, reasonable and disclosed

Saskatchewan's Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers carries the fee rule under the Model Code's number. The rule, and the factors in the first paragraph of its commentary, read:⁵

3.6-1 A lawyer must not charge or accept a fee or disbursement, including interest, unless it is fair and reasonable and has been disclosed in a timely fashion.

Commentary

[1] What is a fair and reasonable fee depends on such factors as:

(a) the time and effort required and spent;

(b) the difficulty of the matter and the importance of the matter to the client;

(c) whether special skill or service has been required and provided;

(d) the results obtained;

(e) fees authorized by statute or regulation;

(f) special circumstances, such as the postponement of payment, uncertainty of reward, or urgency;

(g) the likelihood, if made known to the client, that acceptance of the retainer will result in the lawyer’s inability to accept other employment;

(h) any relevant agreement between the lawyer and the client;

(i) the experience and ability of the lawyer;

(j) whether aspects of the matter have been delegated to non-lawyer staff supervised by the lawyer, and should be billed accordingly;

(k) any estimate or range of fees given by the lawyer; and

(l) the client’s prior consent to the fee.

The Model Code's rule 3.6-1 is word for word the same, and its commentary lists eleven of these factors. Factor (j) is Saskatchewan's own; by the code's history note, it was added on September 23, 2022.⁶

Factor (a) measures time "required and spent". The hours a task would have taken without the tool were neither. Factor (j) speaks of staff, not software, but Saskatchewan's guidelines on generative AI say that "Generative AI tools should be treated as equivalent to nonlawyer assistance", and Manitoba's tell lawyers to "Treat generative AI tools as another delegation of your work."⁷ Read together, the factor and the guidelines give Saskatchewan lawyers a code-based answer: work a tool did under the lawyer's supervision is not billed at the lawyer's rate as if the lawyer had done it by hand. That reading is ours; the guidelines' own section on fees does not cite factor (j).⁸ Under an hourly retainer, what that section allows is the lawyer's own time actually spent instructing the tool and reviewing and editing its output, as set out under "Where they agree" below.

The rest of the commentary governs how the fee is disclosed. The fiduciary relationship "prohibits the acceptance by the lawyer of any hidden fees"; the lawyer should give the client fee information in writing at or soon after the start, "including the basis on which fees will be determined"; and the lawyer "should be ready to explain the basis of the fees and disbursement charged to the client", with an immediate explanation "When something unusual or unforeseen occurs that may substantially affect the amount of a fee or disbursement".⁹

Two further rules matter here, in the same words in the Model Code and in Saskatchewan's code. The commentary to rule 3.6-3 defines a disbursement narrowly: "A lawyer may charge as disbursements only those amounts that have been paid or are required to be paid to a third party by the lawyer on a client’s behalf." Other costs, "such as paralegal, word processing or computer costs that are not disbursements", may be itemized in an "Other Charges" subcategory under fees, "provided that the client has agreed, in writing, to such costs." And rule 3.6-11 provides that if fees or disbursements are "reduced on a review or assessment, the lawyer must repay the monies to the client as soon as is practicable."¹⁰

Fourteen codes, one rule

The table compares each law society's fee rule with rule 3.6-1 of the Model Code and the eleven factors in its commentary. Nine carry both word for word; Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario adapt them; Quebec's two orders have codes of a different design. Every code was read on September 24, 2026, on the society's own site, or on LegisQuébec for Quebec's two regulations.¹

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

What a reasonable fee has meant

The rule is enforced in two places: by the law societies, in discipline, and by the courts, when a client has a lawyer's account assessed or reviewed. None of the decisions below concerns AI. They are where an assessment officer would start.

In Saskatchewan, on the assessment of a lawyer's bill under The Legal Profession Act, 1990, the assessment officer, "in exercising his or her discretion to determine a fair and reasonable amount shall consider the factors set out in the commentary to rule 2.06(1) of the Code of Professional Conduct". The rule of court still uses the number the fee rule carried before the Law Society renumbered its code on September 16, 2016; the factors the Court of Appeal has applied under that number, such as the "time and effort required and spent", are now in the commentary to rule 3.6-1. The Court has held that in deciding what is fair and reasonable those factors "are to be used", that the decision "is left to the discretion of the assessment officer", and that "The onus of proving that an account is fair and reasonable is always on the solicitor". In the case before it, the Local Registrar had found "that the number of hours billed for research was excessive", had cut the time billed for a pretrial brief because "the time required to put the material together should have been minimal", and had ordered the lawyer to refund $13,640.01 to the client; the Court of Appeal dismissed the lawyer's appeal.¹¹

The Court of Appeal for Ontario has held that, where an assessment is to fix the reasonable value of a lawyer's account on a quantum meruit basis, it is an error in principle for it to focus principally "on the mechanical application of an hourly rate to a given number of hours" rather than on all the relevant factors, and that "The quantity of time spent does not solely determine the fairness or reasonableness of the account".¹² That cuts both ways for AI-assisted work. Time is not the only measure of value, so a fee for work a tool made quick is not confined to arithmetic; but whatever is charged has to be justified on all the factors, and the same paragraph adds that a failure to keep proper time dockets "may justify a significant reduction".

British Columbia and Alberta put the test in legislation. On a review of a lawyer's bill in British Columbia, the registrar must consider all the circumstances, including "the time reasonably spent" and, where the lawyer and client agreed an hourly rate, "whether the rate was reasonable", and the registrar's discretion "is not limited by the terms of an agreement between the lawyer and the lawyer's client."¹³ In Alberta, "Except to the extent that a retainer agreement otherwise provides, a lawyer is entitled to be paid a reasonable amount for the services the lawyer performs for a client", considering factors that include "the manner in which the services are performed" and "the skill, work and responsibility involved".¹⁴

On the cost of running a practice, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, upholding a disciplinary finding, said that "Lawyers' fees at hourly rates that might seem excessive to the uninitiated are justified by the necessity of covering staff and overhead expenses." It adopted, as "a statement of trite law", a practice handbook's rule that "Expenses that cannot be charged as disbursements are part of overhead costs and must be absorbed by the lawyers as a cost of doing business", said that departures in borderline cases "should be expressly agreed to by clients", and deferred to the panel's finding that charging paralegal expenses as disbursements "constituted charging fees that were not fully disclosed."¹⁵ Prince Edward Island's Court of Appeal, fixing the costs one party had to pay another, applied the same idea to online legal research, the nearest earlier technology: "Unless online legal research can be shown to save a lawyer’s time and thereby reduce the overall expense, it is overhead and ought not to be assessed".¹⁶

What the law societies say about AI and fees

The table sets out, for each law society, its guidance on generative AI and what that guidance says about fees and about telling the client. Every passage is quoted from the document linked in the same row, read on September 24, 2026.² The translations of the Barreau du Québec's guide, in square brackets, are ours.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Where the table says none found, we searched the open web and, for all but one, the society's own site; a search that finds nothing is not proof that nothing exists.¹⁷

Where they agree

The time a tool saved is not billable time. The seven law societies whose own guidance addresses the point agree, and so does Alberta's model firm policy: Ontario's white paper says that a licensee billing by the hour "can only charge for the time actually spent by the licensee on the file, even if a generative AI tool has made the task much more efficient"; Saskatchewan's guidelines say that a lawyer who uses a tool to produce work more efficiently "cannot charge hourly fees reflecting the time it would have taken the lawyer to generate the work product themselves"; the Barreau's guide says "évitez de facturer pour le gain de temps dû à l’efficacité de l’outil" [avoid billing for the time saved by the tool's efficiency].¹⁸ Nova Scotia goes further and says the tool's existence may matter even to a firm that does not use it: "Even if your firm does not use AI, its availability may change public expectations about what constitutes reasonable time and cost for certain legal services."¹⁹

The time the lawyer spends on the tool is billable. Saskatchewan: "a lawyer may charge for the actual time spent crafting and refining AI inputs and prompts and reviewing and editing generative AI tool outputs." Manitoba: "it is appropriate to charge for the time spent in crafting and refining AI inputs and prompts and in reviewing, confirming, analyzing and editing generative AI tool output." Prince Edward Island: the lawyer "may charge for reasonable time spent analyzing and editing work completed by generative AI tools." The Barreau's guide contemplates billing the time spent preparing and refining the inputs and revising the results.²⁰ Ontario's practice guide lists it among the questions to consider before charging for AI: "Will you charge clients for time spent reviewing and validating AI-generated content?"²¹ Alberta's model policy draws one line the others do not: "time spent on Gen AI training cannot be charged to the client."²²

A flat or alternative fee is allowed, within limits. Ontario says licensees "can consider alternative fee arrangements" so long as they are fair and reasonable and comply with the relevant rules and laws; Saskatchewan and Manitoba say that fee arrangements "should not generate an inappropriate windfall" from the efficiencies an AI tool creates; Prince Edward Island says the technology "should not generate a windfall for lawyers"; and the Barreau's guide, under the heading "Facturation basée sur la valeur" [value-based billing], says "Ajustez les honoraires à la valeur réelle apportée par l’IA" [adjust fees to the real value the AI brings].²³ Nova Scotia adds that "Where AI is used with minimal human involvement, billing as if the work was completed solely by a lawyer may raise ethical concerns."²⁴

The client is to be told, in the fee terms at least. Saskatchewan's guidelines say that "The full disclosure requirement includes transparency about how the use of AI tools has impacted legal fees" and that "A fee agreement must explain the basis for fees and expenses, including those associated with the use of generative AI"; Alberta's playbook asks lawyers to be clear about their use of AI in the retainer letter, and its model firm policy says that fee agreements "should explain the basis for all fees and costs, including those associated with Gen AI"; Nova Scotia's guide says "If AI was used to assist with legal research, drafting, or analysis, clearly describe this in the statement of account rather than implying the work was done manually."²⁵ On disclosing the use of AI as such, the guidance ranges from "should consider disclosing" (Saskatchewan) and "Consider disclosing" (Manitoba) to "should properly inform the client" (Prince Edward Island), "Let them know that you use it" (Alberta's playbook) and "It is important to inform clients" (the Northwest Territories), whose guidance adds, on fees, that lawyers "must also ensure that their clients are informed about how GenAI contributes to the work being billed".² Ontario's white paper leaves it to judgment and lists the questions to ask, among them: "Does the client reasonably expect that the material being prepared by generative AI would actually be prepared by a licensee?"²⁶ The Barreau's guide is the only guidance we found that asks for the client's explicit agreement to the financial terms, "y compris des éventuels coûts supplémentaires liés à l’IA générative" [including any additional costs related to generative AI], and for "consentement éclairé concernant l’utilisation de l’IA et la structure des honoraires proposés" [informed consent to the use of AI and to the proposed fee structure], and in its section on professional secrecy it asks that the client's consent to the use of AI in the file be "formalisé par écrit" [put in writing]. Quebec's lawyers' code already requires the lawyer, before agreeing to provide services, to obtain the client's consent to the financial terms, unless the lawyer has reason to believe the client is already informed of them.²⁷ The separate question of consent before client information goes into a tool is the subject of our article on client files in Claude and ChatGPT.

Where they disagree: the tool's cost

The law societies do not agree on how the cost of the tool itself reaches the client. The Northwest Territories says that "any costs associated with the use of GenAI, such as subscriptions or licensing fees, should be transparently categorized as disbursements and clearly communicated to the client." Ontario says that "whether a licensee can pass on the cost of using generative AI or other technology to a client as a disbursement depends on the specific circumstances", and that a licensee who passes it on must make sure the disbursement is fair and reasonable, disclosed in a timely fashion and "billed at its actual cost rather than an estimated cost". Nova Scotia leaves the choice open: "Consider whether AI subscriptions or per-use fees should be treated as disbursements or absorbed as part of your operational overhead." Alberta's model policy says only that "fees for the use of Gen AI may be billed to the client".²⁸

The codes and the decisions on overhead support a position, not a settled rule. Our view is that a general subscription to an AI tool, used across the firm's files, is overhead and not a disbursement, and is recovered through the firm's fees unless the retainer discloses a separate charge for it. The commentary to rule 3.6-3, which the Northwest Territories' own code carries in the same words as the Model Code and Saskatchewan's, limits disbursements to "those amounts that have been paid or are required to be paid to a third party by the lawyer on a client’s behalf", and puts "computer costs that are not disbursements" under fees, as "Other Charges", only where "the client has agreed, in writing".²⁹ A subscription the firm pays whether or not this client's file exists is not paid on the client's behalf. The handbook passage that the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal adopted draws the line with a but-for test: the office expenses that may be charged as disbursements are those "which would not have been incurred in the lawyers' offices but for the instructions received from the clients", and the rest "are part of overhead costs"; departures in borderline cases "should be expressly agreed to by clients".¹⁵ A general subscription fails that test; a charge the firm incurs only because of this client's instructions passes it.

The courts have divided over the nearest earlier technology, online legal research, when fixing the costs one party pays another. Prince Edward Island's Court of Appeal treated it as overhead unless it could be shown to "save a lawyer’s time and thereby reduce the overall expense",¹⁶ an exception that a tool which does save time may meet. The Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan, noting "jurisprudence that goes both ways", preferred the view that "absent special circumstances, electronic research is not a recoverable disbursement because it is part of the general overhead of a law firm".³⁰ The Court of Appeal for Ontario went the other way: online research charges "should be recoverable as disbursements provided they are not excessive and have been charged to the client", so long as the disbursement "does not fall within standard office overhead".³¹ None of these decisions concerns AI, or a lawyer's account to the client.

A charge incurred for one client's matter is different. A per-use or matter-specific charge paid to a third party for that matter can fit the definition of a disbursement, and can be passed on at its actual cost, disclosed in advance, as Ontario's guide requires. A firm that wants to recover a share of a general subscription from each client should say so in the retainer and have the client's agreement in writing; the codes' commentary would show that as an "Other Charge" under fees, where the Northwest Territories' guidance would call it a disbursement. Whatever the method, the charge must itself be fair and reasonable, and nothing may be marked up without saying so: the commentary "prohibits the acceptance by the lawyer of any hidden fees".⁹

What the courts have done

We found no reported Canadian decision in which a court or assessment officer priced AI-assisted time on a lawyer's own account: none in which an assessment officer or a court reviewing a lawyer's bill reduced a fee because AI did or could have done the work, and none that allowed or disallowed an AI tool's cost as a disbursement to the client.³ The 30 decisions read for this article, in which a filing's invented or misdescribed authorities bore on costs, fees or a sanction, show courts using costs, not fee assessment, as the lever. Thirteen concern filings by lawyers or licensed paralegals, fifteen filings by self-represented parties, and two are decisions of Ontario's Law Society Tribunal.³²

In 2018, two Ontario judges fixing the costs one party pays another looked at research time with AI in view. In Cass v 1410088 Ontario Inc., the court disallowed a successful defendant's $900 disbursement for legal research, saying that whatever the research was "would be well within the preparation for the motion" and that "If artificial intelligence sources were employed, no doubt counsel’s preparation time would have been significantly reduced."³³ In Drummond v The Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd., the court allowed a successful plaintiff's disbursement for computer-assisted legal research, holding that the time spent on research is recoverable "both as a component of counsel fee and as a disbursement" if the expenditure "both in terms of lawyer time and computer time is reasonable and appropriate for the particular legal problem", and that further advances in artificial intelligence are "to be anticipated and to be encouraged"; the Court of Appeal for Ontario later allowed the defendant's appeal, dismissed the action and awarded the defendant its costs of the action.³⁴ Neither decision concerns a lawyer's account to the client, and neither is among the 30 decisions.

Among them, the one order that reached what a lawyer could bill her own client was a condition, not an assessment, and a contingent one. In Ko v Li, counsel had filed a factum that, as the court recorded, was "created using ChatGPT and contains fake cases". The judge said that "The error was not delegating the factum or using generative AI to assist in drafting the factum", but signing and using it without making sure that the cases were real and supported the arguments made.³⁵ He had given notice that "one possible remedy" was to ensure that counsel did not bill her client "for the drafting, delivering, and use of the deficient factum", and Ontario's rules allow a court to disallow costs between a lawyer and client, or to order a lawyer to repay money paid on account of costs, where the lawyer caused costs to be incurred without reasonable cause.³⁶ British Columbia's family rules and the Federal Courts Rules give courts the same kind of power over what a lawyer may charge the client.³⁷ In the end he dismissed the contempt proceeding on conditions to which counsel agreed: that she take the professional development courses she had undertaken to take, and that she not bill her client for the research, factum writing and attendance on the motion "in the event that [the client] receives assets to give her a means to pay for services rendered". "[The client] is also protected from being billed for inapt services," he wrote.³⁸ Counsel had won the motion "without reliance on the factum", and the Federal Court later described the case as one in which counsel "received no remuneration from the litigation".³⁹ The condition had a second consequence. The costs that the client could claim from the other side were fixed on the footing that "The only costs that may now be payable by [the client] to her counsel on the motion are for preliminary steps and drafting the motion record": $4,000 on a partial indemnity scale, against the $20,000 she had sought on a full indemnity scale.⁴⁰ The court later required counsel to show cause on a second contempt for admitting that statements she had made to it in the first proceeding were untrue, and Ontario's Law Society Tribunal, which recorded that the judge had not known this when he set the condition, suspended her for six months.⁴¹ Our article on technological competence tells that part of the story.

Other courts have acted through costs against counsel personally, and where counsel had charged the client nothing, that counted in counsel's favour. In Hussein v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), the Federal Court found that "the use of generative artificial intelligence not only undeclared but, frankly, concealed from the Court combined with the failure to verify the content amounts to special reasons warranting an award of costs", in an immigration proceeding where costs are not ordinarily awarded.⁴² At the second stage, counsel said he "did not charge the Applicant for the work on this judicial review", and the costs he was ordered to pay personally were set at $100, a "modest amount", "Given that Applicant’s counsel was not remunerated for his services in the file" and because the Court also found that the respondent's lack of action had made matters worse.⁴³

In National Indigenous Fisheries Institute v Canada (Fisheries and Oceans), the applicant's in-house counsel "had subcontracted the legal research on this matter and did not verify the references provided", and the authorities cited did not exist. The Federal Court awarded costs on a solicitor-client basis, said they "are not solely related to the undisclosed use of AI and the hallucinated cases", found that "it would be unfair for NIFI to assume these costs alone", and ordered the applicant and its counsel personally to pay them jointly.⁴⁴ The client did not bear those costs alone: its lawyer was made liable for them too.

The Court of Appeal of Alberta has made checking time part of the job. "The time needed to verify and cross-reference cited case authorities generated by a large language model must be planned for as part of a lawyer’s practice management responsibilities", it said in Reddy v Saroya, and where someone else prepares the material, the lawyer whose name is on it bears "ultimate responsibility".⁴⁵ In its later ruling on costs it held that lead counsel's use of a contractor, who had drafted the factum with a large language model, "did not absolve him of the need to adequately review work prepared by someone else prior to filing it with the Court", and ordered him to pay $17,550 plus GST personally, an amount it said "should be reflective of the steps the respondent had to take because of the appellant’s lead counsel’s conduct".⁴⁶ A lawyer who has a contractor draft with AI and bills the result at a lawyer's rate without checking it is exposed twice: under the fee rule, and to costs.

Time spent checking the other side's invented citations is a cost the courts have shifted to the party that caused it. In Zhang v Chen, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered counsel who had inserted fake cases to bear personally the additional effort and expense they caused, allowing costs for four half days.⁴⁷ The Federal Court fixed a respondent's costs at $1,260, holding that because of undeclared AI use and hallucinated authorities "additional work was required".⁴⁸ The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia raised a self-represented plaintiff's contribution to the defendant's legal expenses to 75%, $7,125, because "Using a non-existent case name unnecessarily wastes legal resources by causing those responding to the brief to waste time looking for something which does not exist."⁴⁹ British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal put the imbalance plainly: "It takes little time to have a large language model create lengthy submissions with many case citations. It takes considerably more effort for the other party to wade through those submissions to determine which cases are real".⁵⁰ A lawyer who spends time running down an opponent's invented authorities is doing real work for the client, and the decisions have let the client recover some of that time in costs, in amounts the court fixes at its discretion.

The decisions about self-represented parties are context, not rules about lawyers' fees, but they show how courts value the time. Courts have awarded modest amounts, $200 or $500, against self-represented parties whose AI-drafted filings cited cases that did not exist, sometimes discounted because the party apologized or did not rely on the cases at the hearing; they have raised a contribution to costs or fixed a lump sum for the extra work; and they have refused costs to a party who succeeded but had filed fake cases.⁵¹ The Tax Court of Canada, declining to make an order, still said: "The cases may be fake but the cost consequences of filing such nonsense are real."⁵²

Ontario's Law Society Tribunal has used costs in the same way. In a licensee's own proceeding, it held that his "irresponsible use of artificial intelligence is an additional and significantly aggravating factor", said that it "would have awarded the Law Society most of its costs if the respondent had not used artificial intelligence as he did", and ordered him to pay its full costs of $31,150.⁵³ In Law Society of Ontario v Lee, the discipline case that followed Ko v Li, it accepted a joint proposal of a six-month suspension and $10,000 in costs.⁵⁴

What may go on the account

The rule and the guidance give clear answers to most of the questions a billing partner will ask. Where they do not, the answer below says so.

What may be billed: the time the lawyer and staff actually spent, including time spent framing the task for the tool, reading its output against the sources, correcting it and exercising the judgment the client is paying for. Checking time is not optional: the Court of Appeal of Alberta says that the time needed to verify authorities a language model generated "must be planned for as part of a lawyer’s practice management responsibilities".⁴⁵ Where that time will be charged, Ontario's practice guide asks lawyers to consider how it affects the fee estimate.²¹ A flat or value fee, agreed in advance and fair on the rule 3.6-1 factors, may reflect the value of the work rather than the minutes it took, but three law societies warn against a windfall from the tool's efficiency, and Manitoba's code adds that a fee "so disproportionate to the services rendered as to introduce the element of fraud or dishonesty, or undue profit" is not fair and reasonable.²³

What may not be billed: hours the task would have taken without the tool, and, on Alberta's model firm policy, time spent learning to use the tool.²² Time spent fixing the tool's own mistakes is the hard case. It was spent, but factor (a) also asks whether it was required, and a client may fairly ask why it should pay for the tool's error; at the least, it should not reach the account without an explanation. Ontario's practice guide gives, as an example of the unforeseen event that calls for an immediate explanation to the client, the case where "a generative AI tool produces an incorrect or faulty result that you relied upon, leading to additional work"; an explanation does not answer whether the extra work was required. In Ko v Li the dismissal was conditional on counsel billing nothing for the work built on the unchecked factum, if the client received assets that gave her the means to pay.⁵⁵

The tool's cost: this is where the authorities divide, as set out above. On our reading, a subscription used across matters is overhead, charged to the client only where the retainer discloses the charge and the client agrees to it in writing, and a cost incurred for this client's matter alone may be passed on at its actual cost, disclosed in advance. In the Northwest Territories, the Law Society's guidance treats subscriptions and licensing fees as disbursements.²⁸

Telling the client: seven of the nine law societies with guidance on fees, and Alberta's model firm policy, ask that the fee terms, and the effect of AI on them, be made clear to the client,² and Alberta's playbook puts the use of AI in the retainer letter. Whether to disclose the use of AI itself is something to consider in some of the guidance and something to do in the rest; in Quebec, the Barreau's guide asks for informed consent to the use of AI and to the fee structure, and for consent to the use of AI to be put in writing. Where a court requires a declaration that AI was used in a filing, the use will be public anyway; Ontario's white paper lists that as the first factor in deciding whether to tell the client.²⁶

Retainer wording: nothing in the codes or the guidance prescribes it. Wording along these lines, ours and not a law society's, covers the points the guidance raises:

We use generative AI tools, under the supervision of our lawyers, for tasks such as research, first drafts and document review, and we check what they produce before we rely on it. We bill for the time our lawyers and staff actually spend, including time spent instructing and checking those tools, and not for time the tools save. The cost of tools we use across our practice is part of our overhead and is not charged to you. If a tool is used for your matter alone and has a separate cost, we will tell you in advance and charge only what we pay for it.

The wording is written for an hourly retainer. Under a flat fee, the second sentence would describe the fee instead; a firm that passes subscription costs on to clients, as the Northwest Territories' guidance contemplates, would say so, and how each client's share is worked out, in place of the third. Each sentence is a promise the firm will be held to, including the promise to check what the tools produce.

The client's right to an assessment: the client can ask to have the account assessed or reviewed. In Saskatchewan an assessment officer determines "a fair and reasonable amount" on the code's factors; in British Columbia a registrar considers "the time reasonably spent" and is not bound by the agreement; in Alberta a review officer reviews a lawyer's charges under Part 10 of the Alberta Rules of Court.⁵⁶ If the fee is reduced, rule 3.6-11 requires the lawyer to repay the difference "as soon as is practicable".¹⁰

Content the client brings: the Barreau's guide is the only guidance we found on AI-generated material the client supplies, and it says that billing the time needed to check it could be considered: "Lorsque la cliente ou le client transmet des contenus générés par un outil d’IAG, la facturation pourrait aussi être envisagée pour le temps requis à leur validation, leur réécriture ou leur ajustement afin d’en assurer la conformité et la fiabilité." [Where the client sends content generated by a generative AI tool, billing could also be considered for the time needed to validate, rewrite or adjust it to make sure it is compliant and reliable.]⁵⁷ The same reasoning holds outside Quebec: checking a client's AI-drafted chronology or legal summary is time actually spent, and the client should know in advance that it will be billed.

• Bill the time actually spent. Never the time the task would have taken without the tool.
• Record the checking. Docket the time spent instructing, reading, verifying and correcting AI output, and say in the account that AI assisted, as Nova Scotia's guide asks.
• Put checking time in the estimate. It has to be planned for, and if it will be charged, the estimate should include it.
• Sort the tool's cost. A subscription used across matters: overhead unless the retainer discloses a charge, agreed in writing; a cost incurred for this matter: at cost, disclosed. The Northwest Territories' guidance treats subscriptions as disbursements.
• Say it in the retainer. How AI is used, how fees are calculated when it is, and how any AI-related charge is treated.
• Test a flat fee against the factors. It may reflect value, but not a windfall from the tool's efficiency.
• Explain the unexpected at once. If a tool's error causes extra work, tell the client, and ask whether the rework was required before it goes on the account.
• Do not bill for learning the tool. Training time is the firm's; Alberta's model firm policy says so expressly.
• Tell the client about client-supplied AI content. If checking it will be billed, say so before the work is done.

What changes, and what does not

The rule has not changed. A fee must be fair and reasonable and disclosed in a timely fashion, measured by time and effort "required and spent", skill, results, the agreement and the other factors in the commentary. None of the codes or the guidance proposes a different rule for AI-assisted work. What AI changes is what those factors produce. When a tool does in minutes what took hours, the hours are no longer required, the lawyer's judgment and checking become a larger part of what the client pays for, and, as Nova Scotia's guide puts it, the tool's availability "may change public expectations about what constitutes reasonable time and cost" whether or not the firm uses it.¹⁹ Under an hourly retainer the time saved belongs to the client. Under a flat or value fee the lawyer may keep some of it, if the retainer says so and the fee is still fair on the rule's factors. Such a retainer can allocate the efficiency, but it cannot make an unfair fee fair: the rendering of legal services "is not simply a matter of contract between client and lawyer", as the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan has put it, and a British Columbia registrar's discretion on a review "is not limited by the terms of an agreement between the lawyer and the lawyer's client".⁵⁸ The efficiency belongs to the client unless a flat or value fee, disclosed and agreed in advance and itself fair and reasonable, gives some of it to the lawyer.

This article does not cover legal aid tariffs, insurers' and other third-party payors' billing guidelines, or contingency fees, each of which has rules of its own; Nova Scotia's guide suggests revisiting contingency fee arrangements where AI improves a lawyer's ability to assess risk.⁵⁹

Where WarmLoop fits, and where it does not

WarmLoop is a Canadian legal research and verification service that a lawyer uses through an AI assistant. It works today with Claude, it is built for AI assistants that support the open Model Context Protocol, and each account is set up by hand during the current early access. It is sold by the company that wrote and published this article, so read what follows as WarmLoop's own account of itself, and put it to the same questions this article puts to any other tool.⁶⁰

Under the rule as this article reads it, the time that goes on the account is the time actually spent, checking included, and under an hourly retainer the time a tool saves belongs to the client. WarmLoop's citation check does the mechanical part of the checking that the Court of Appeal of Alberta says must be planned for: in one pass over a draft it reports, for each authority, whether the citation resolves to a decision it holds under the name given, whether the pinpoint holds and whether the quoted words match the text, and it returns the disposition and the paragraphs either side of each pinpoint. What remains, and what goes on the docket, is reading those paragraphs in an official copy and the judgment on them, which is the work the client is paying for, and the report names what was found and what was not, so that the docket entry the checklist above asks for, the time spent verifying and correcting, can say what was checked and what the tool found. Its research returns Canadian decisions and legislation from the text it holds, so that the hours saved are the hours of searching, and its note-up lists the later decisions it holds that cite a case, with their treatment of it where that has been analysed.⁶⁰

The tool's cost is the question this article could not settle from the authorities, so here is how the article's position applies to WarmLoop's own cost. WarmLoop is licensed as an account for one named user and is used across that lawyer's matters.⁶⁰ On our reading of the rule it is overhead, charged to a client only where the retainer discloses the charge and the client agrees to it in writing. The Northwest Territories' guidance, as set out above, would treat it as a disbursement; that is the guidance's reading, not ours. Nothing about the tool changes the rule: on an assessment or review, the account is measured on the same factors whether or not a tool was used, and what a tool changes is what those factors produce.

Where it does not fit: "verified" means that WarmLoop found the case, the pinpoint and a close match for the quoted words in the copy it holds, which is an unofficial one; it does not mean that the authority is good law or that the proposition is supported, and its Terms say that its verification features reduce the work of verification and do not discharge it.⁶¹ The time the courts and the law societies' guidance require, reading each authority for what it holds, is still time to spend and to record, and WarmLoop machine-checks: it does not review or endorse an argument, and it does not decide what may go on the account.